The Blue Last (23 page)

There was a silence suffused (Melrose hoped) with the proper respect. Trueblood finally broke it, saying, “But I wish you would take another look at the panel, Signore Di Bada.”

“If it would please you.” Di Bada ran his eye over the saintly figure, even got so far as to take out a magnifying glass, a big one with a horn handle. He ran this over the painting, his eye making quick little darts. He returned the magnifying glass to its perch atop a small hill of books. He thought for a little while. “Perhaps you shouldn't rest your case on the opinion of such as I. I am an expert, true. But there is one who knows perhaps even more—”

Melrose tried to keep from slipping down in his chair, but did not wholly succeed. Trueblood was, of course, all ears.

“—this is Tomas Prada who lives in Lucca. It is worth your time to see him. I am sorry I cannot be more helpful. I can only say what I said before, that this is so unlikely to be by Masaccio . . .” Di Bada shrugged.

He went on, with a shake of his head. “Masaccio had nothing. He owed money to others; he possessed nothing; he had pawned his clothes. Yet was he not one of the chosen? I sometimes envy the mental state that simply forgets the material world. Not ‘denies' it, for that of course is to acknowledge it before pushing it away. But no, Masaccio forgot that it even existed. He was one of the chosen.”

All through dinner—a marvelous fish soup, followed by a
tagliatelle alle noci,
followed by partridge, right into their
dolce,
a warm zabaglione—they argued. Not in a bellicose way, because the restaurant was too fine and the food too good, not even particularly contentiously or continually. They brought it up, let it lie, brought it up again.

Melrose said, “I simply refuse to go to a ‘One-who-knows.' ”

“It's not that far. Lucca's almost right on the way.”

“ ‘Almost' is the operative word here. Now listen: we have already spoken to the foremost authority and leading expert. I refuse to drag myself—”

“ ‘Drag'? It's a Maserati.”

“On these drifting hills
nothing
is a Maserati. I refuse to go in search of One-who-knows.” Except that Melrose was intrigued by now with this entity he himself had really conjured out of Di Bada's phrase. He really wanted to see this inquiry through to its godforsaken end. He did not, however, want to agree to this third leg of their journey without a certain amount of resistance. Anyway, it was fun listening to Trueblood whimper and plead. He picked up his glass of Chianti (which was unlike anything you could get in England) and said, “Oh, all right.” He dipped his spoon once again into his Marsala-drowned custard. How could something so simple taste so wonderful?

Trueblood was pleased as punch. Melrose said, “You know, the more we go on with this, the nearer we get to the question, not the answer.”

Trueblood looked a little shell-shocked, his eyes like cartoon eyes,
X
s in place of pupils. “What do you mean?”

“I don't know, really. It's just something I felt. Marshall, what are you doing?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you chewing your zabaglione? It's custard.”

“I'm not chewing. But I was thinking, shouldn't we go to Pisa; even if we can't see that part of the altarpiece, we could walk around the Carmine to sort of feel the context.”

Melrose knew that Trueblood knew
that
entreaty would fall on deaf ears.

He glanced quickly at Melrose and said, “No, I expect not.” He had the look of one who had finally discovered his home, only to find the family had been turned out of the house . . .

Melrose took another swallow of the Chianti and asked himself if Trueblood—running all over Tuscany with his questionable painting—if Trueblood weren't, like Masaccio, one of the chosen.

T
he next morning Melrose was awakened at some intransigent hour by Trueblood's banging on his door.

“Sorry,” he said when Melrose stumbled to open it. “But just knocking wasn't enough.”

“At dawn, it usually isn't.”

“Dawn? Good lord, it's after eight.”

“Close enough to dawn for me.” Melrose yawned.

The sun had come out yet there was still this ocean of mist at their ankles, and Melrose felt as he had the night before, that he was standing on a ship's prow, looking out over empty water. After coffee and rolls, they stashed their small bags in the trunk and aimed the car toward Lucca.

This time, Melrose didn't have to be argued into taking the
autostrada.
Neither did the Maserati. They flew.

 

 

 

A buxom girl in a dirndl and peasant blouse opened the door, painted an astonishing blue, and said,
“Posso aiutarle?”

Melrose did not think she'd asked “What posse of retards are you?” So he assumed it must be something to do with offering help. He asked if she spoke English. “We're English—
inglese
?”

“Ah,
sì, sì!
”

“We'd like to see Signore Prada. I called—”

“
Non capisco . . .”

She seemed genuinely upset. Melrose put an imaginary phone to his ear and pretended to be dialing. “Mr. Plant? Mr. Trueblood? Called before.”

“Ah,
sì! Per favore.
” Her outstretched arm motioned them in to a hallway pleasantly adorned with more photographs than Melrose had ever seen on one wall, a delicate table with a soft-glowing lamp on it, and the scent of a flower he couldn't determine. They followed her down the hall to a door she lightly knocked upon.

The girl opened the door and let them pass before her.
“Grazie,”
said Trueblood.

“Prego.”
She nodded and left.

The gentleman who had been standing by the window Melrose assumed to be Tomas Prada. “Signore Prada?” said Melrose. He introduced himself and Trueblood. “We called about the painting.”

Tomas Prada, Melrose judged, was somewhere in his late fifties. He had very dark hair and a thick mustache, both of which showed signs of gray. His features were chiseled, his cheekbones and nose sharply defined.

“Ah, yes. The Masaccio. Please, sit.” Prada indicated two comfortable-looking armchairs. He himself continued to stand by the window.

He must also have been a painter; Melrose saw the easel and what looked like fresh paint on the canvas, a study of an olive grove, as nearly as he could tell. “You're a painter yourself?”

Prada gave a self-deprecating shrug. “
Si.
I teach at the Accedemi in Florence. Three days a week only, so I choose to continue to live in Lucca.” Prada left the window and came across the room. “Now, let's see this Masaccio you fancy you've found.”

Melrose (who for some reason had today put himself at the helm of this little ship) thought his comment rather patronizing and set him straight: “It's not precisely our fancy
.
Mr. Trueblood has shown this to several people, here and in England, all authorities on Renaissance art, including your friend Pietro di Bada. Neither he nor the others feel they can say definitely that it
isn't
Masaccio's work.” Although Di Bada had come damned close.

Prada smiled a rather inky smile. His mustache was all over it. “Wall sitters.” He waved away the other authorities, including his friend Pietro.

Melrose frowned. “ ‘Wall sit . . .'? Oh, you mean
fence
-sitters.”

“Those who cannot make their minds up. Let me see.” With both hands he took the panel, which he rested upright on the floor against the easel. He gave it a quick once over. Then he took it to the window and made his examination slower. “First, have you run tests on the material”

“Yes,” said Trueblood.

“And the paints, the surface, they are compatible with the fifteenth century?”

Trueblood nodded.

Prada again leaned the panel against the easel, adjusting its position so that it got more light. He looked at it for some time, one arm across his midsection, the other braced there as he indulged the nervous habit of pulling at his mustache. Prada was silent for some moments, staring at St. Who. After a while he said, “These altarpieces were commonly dismantled, the separate parts to be taken by whatever family had commissioned the work in the first place. Sold perhaps, perhaps passing through many hands. None of the Pisa polyptych is in the church of the Carmine anymore, and only one piece is in Pisa itself, in a museum. This is very interesting.”

Prada moved to the window again to look at the painting. “You know Donatello had a lock put on his workshop because he feared others would steal or plagiarize his work. Which at least one did. There was so much competition for commissions, for they meant not only money, but more commissions.” He said all of this to the painting. Looking up from his examination, Prada sighed. He handed the picture back to Trueblood. “I have a suggestion. You have started at the end of your search. Go back to the beginning.”

“The beginning. Instead of the end. Now, how did you come by this picture?”

“In an antique shop. I'm a dealer myself.”

“And what about the shop that sold this to you? Is it reliable?”

Trueblood nodded.

“What is the provenance? Where did he find it?”

“She. According to the woman who sold it to me, she found it in San Giovanni Valdarno.”

“That is something that tells against it, to claim it was found there. And how could one even entertain the notion that this is part of the Pisa polyptych, and hang it up to sell
?
No. How much did you pay for it, if I may inquire?”

“Two thousand pounds.”

Prada nodded. “In other circumstances, quite a lot of money, but only a fraction of what this would be worth if it was whole and if it was genuine. You said it was tested for its physical properties?”

“Yes,” said Trueblood, “as well as could be in a short time.”

Prada moved to the easel again. “Would it be St. John the Baptist? He has the weighty form you find in Masaccio's figures. The chiaroscuro—that shadow just there—” he pointed to the side at what Melrose couldn't even make out, it was so subtle “—is Masaccio, yes? And the spatial effects.
Sì
... Of course, you know Masaccio was the first to make use of Brunelleschi's architectural perspective? The receding diagonals giving the illusion of reality. The centric point, the vanishing point. You have seen the
Trinity
?”

They both grunted what they hoped would pass for an “Of course.”

Tomas Prada smiled beatifically. He could easily have taken the place of one of these panels. “I think not. I think you have not been to the Santa Maria Novella.”

What the hell was this, anyway? Did Prada mean to give them a lie-detector test? Wasn't it enough for these Italians they had come
all the way from London
? And driven over half of Tuscany pursuing this dream?

“You must go, obviously. You see, Masaccio made an astonishing leap between the style of the San Giovanni triptych and the
Trinity.
No other painter, not even Leonardo, changed so quickly and with such amazing results. You must see this vaulted ceiling. The perspective, the blurring, the vanishing point. What is interesting is that the doctrine of redemption is also a blurring, a
sfumatura,
of space and time. Christ gives himself once, but then there is the Eucharist, where he gives himself again and again, unendingly, in complete contradiction of time and space. You see? The receding diagonals give the illusion of reality so that one might, in seeing the forms in the painting as real, believe in the subject. Perspective was Masaccio's theology.” As he said this he was looking at Trueblood's painting.

“To see what pieces have been recovered of the Carmine polyptych, you would have to go to Vienna, Berlin and, of course, London. The National Gallery houses—” Prada grew thoughtful “—the central panel, I believe. The
Madonna and Child.
The entire predella story is in Berlin. This”—he tapped Trueblood's panel—“would have been one of the wings, the side panels next to the Madonna. St. John or St. Nicholas, probably. I mean if it was authentic.”

Melrose shot Trueblood a look to see if Berlin, having got two mentions, was now in the travel plans, but Trueblood was wholly taken up with what Tomas Prada was saying.

Right now, Prada was smiling. “Perhaps I must join my friend Di Bada on the wall—”

“Fence?” said Melrose, matching the smile.

“
Sì.
Only, there's one thing that greatly perplexes me, Mr. Trueblood.”